• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Twitch Plays Pokemon: Dig, Dig for Victory!

We should all go over to Twitch plays Pokemon blue and collectively try to do well. It's the old system except it's worse as there are users telling everyone to go away so one person can take over on the important bits. I say we turn it into neogaf plays :p
 

Sianos

Member
Yeah but if you're actually watching the stream it hasn't changed much. The only difference is that we were able to navigate a maze.

And now we're meeting with Game Freak, to discuss to proper course of action. :U

Watch a speedrun of the game or even a Let's Play if you're looking for rapid progress. Both are entertaining in their own right, but this stream is trying to give a different, more chaotic experience.
 

Ambient80

Member
By the way, why is Nintendo not shutting this channel down? I thought rom hacks and emulators were not tolerated...?

Nintendo is in a position where causing 100k+ people to get really pissed off at them would cause an insane amount of bad PR. Plus, this isn't really taking away sales of a current game, and someone made the point before that this particular stream is so unique that it could possibly fall under fair use, anyway.
 
I want this T-shirt design like you wouldn't believe.
tumblr_n15y48NVl21r8sc3ro1_500.jpg
 

OTIX

Member
If democracy had been on from the start then this stream would have 5 viewers. It's totally uninteresting and it shouldn't have been implemented until the safari zone which is legit impossible under anarchy even with a small number of viewers.
 
When democracy was turned on and we were trying to navigate the maze, it was still really exciting to watch the votes tallying. I'm not holding this stream up to some sort of imaginary ideal, it's entertainment.

If you want chaos, it's definitely still here. We are currently in the Game Freak development building for no reason.
 

trixx

Member
We should all go over to Twitch plays Pokemon blue and collectively try to do well. It's the only system except it's worse as there are users telling everyone to go away so one person can take over on the important bits. I say we turn it into neogaf plays :p
I think Blue stream and Red stream serve different purposes for different people. If you want to play through the game with others like me then play through the blue stream, but if you want to watch randomness and hillarity play through the red stream.

That's why the blue stream is considered as boring, because people are actually trying to play through it. By all means both streams are great but i'm not going to place my thoughts on red stream anymore, let people do what they want. You can't/shouldn't take the red stream seriously theres too many trolls.
 

mclem

Member
It wouldnt, as soon as the numbers are low enough to manage the obstacle, they'd go right back up. The numbers would ebb and flow like a beautiful mathematical wave.

How low do they need to be to manage the obstacle? We're dealing with a situation where:

* First, metastrategies aren't really viable. It works for situations where you just have to spam one direction - the ledge, the door leading to Erika's tree. That's not really the case in this environment.
* The ledge had twelve failure paths. The maze actually only has six, by my count, but - significantly - they're all *different*.
* AFTER FAILURE in the maze, merely resetting requires markedly more precision than the ledge did; spamming left, versus hitting the correct tile based on movement. In other words: simply getting *out* is a problem.
* AFTER GETTING OUT, it's very easy to fall into the *other* maze, which requires precision just to escape


That's the thing: It takes significantly longer to recover from a fail than it does to actually proceed through the challenge.

I should add: I would agree with you more if it wasn't for the lag. Not being able to consistently determine when (or if, given start) your input becomes relevant is highly dangerous. Even competent players can be counter-productive.

And finally: What if the wrong players give up and leave? We've already seen huge piles of bots irritating things up, and they don't get bored, and they don't lose interest. It'd become a bot wasteland before success, I suspect.

With a bit more thought, I wonder if I can calculate how many times more complicated the maze is in comparison with the ledge. Ledge took eight hours or so, right?
 
I think some people are conflating the intent of the players with the intent of the stream.
- some players want to progress through the game.
- some players want to hinder progress through the game.
- some players just want to get lost in the heat of the moment and don't care if progress is made as long as great stories can be told.

The purpose of the stream is to see how these players reconcile with each other given the obstacles in place. No method of stream/viewer interaction will serve every demographic of player.
 

okayfrog

Banned
If democracy had been on from the start then this stream would have 5 viewers. It's totally uninteresting and it shouldn't have been implemented until the safari zone which is legit impossible under anarchy even with a small number of viewers.

The streamer already said that he'd turn off the step counter for Safari Zone so that we don't try over and over again and run out of money.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
When democracy was turned on and we were trying to navigate the maze, it was still really exciting to watch the votes tallying. I'm not holding this stream up to some sort of imaginary ideal, it's entertainment.

If you want chaos, it's definitely still here. We are currently in the Game Freak development building for no reason.

No, its different.

The current Chaos is because of the voting system and people discussing/voting on the system instead of playing it.
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
The voting system?

The fact that I KNOW that in a space of a few minutes, this can slow from chaotic to snail pace boring.

I liked the element of randomness.

Being stuck in the same place for a whole day isn't boring? oh look red is spinning in the wrong direction AGAIN.

it's not entertaining
 
Being stuck in the same place for a whole day isn't boring? oh look red is spinning in the wrong direction AGAIN.

it's not entertaining

But, when you use the democracy system, it loses all gratification when you finally overcome an obstacle. Stuff like the ledge, the PC, all become meaningless.

What he means by boring isn't losing progress, its losing excitement.
 

jaded_up_

Banned
Being stuck in the same place for a whole day isn't boring? oh look red is spinning in the wrong direction AGAIN.

it's not entertaining

On the contrary, "oh look, Red moved 5 steps in the last 5 minutes".

I think Anarchy brings more entertainment (albeit with extreme frustration in some parts) but the fact that the game actually takes each individual input in consideration is entertaining in itself.
 

SuperSah

Banned
Being stuck in the same place for a whole day isn't boring? oh look red is spinning in the wrong direction AGAIN.

it's not entertaining

It's more entertaining then moving one step every 30-40 seconds and achieving unsatisfactory success.

I've switched off, I'll tune back in if it picks up again.
 

okayfrog

Banned
Being stuck in the same place for a whole day isn't boring? oh look red is spinning in the wrong direction AGAIN.

it's not entertaining

Neither is the slowest Let's Play of all time, yet for some reason that's what Democracy wants.

In all honesty, I couldn't watch either for a long period of time, but I'd rather watch 12 hours of Red spinning in a circle than one single minute of Red following the correct path all the damn time.
 

140.85

Cognitive Dissonance, Distilled
Why do they keep tainting this experiment with voting and other stuff? Kinda kills the uniqueness of it.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
How low do they need to be to manage the obstacle? We're dealing with a situation where:

* First, metastrategies aren't really viable. It works for situations where you just have to spam one direction - the ledge, the door leading to Erika's tree. That's not really the case in this environment.
* The ledge had twelve failure paths. The maze actually only has six, by my count, but - significantly - they're all *different*.
* AFTER FAILURE in the maze, merely resetting requires markedly more precision than the ledge did; spamming left, versus hitting the correct tile based on movement. In other words: simply getting *out* is a problem.
* AFTER GETTING OUT, it's very easy to fall into the *other* maze, which requires precision just to escape


That's the thing: It takes significantly longer to recover from a fail than it does to actually proceed through the challenge.

I should add: I would agree with you more if it wasn't for the lag. Not being able to consistently determine when (or if, given start) your input becomes relevant is highly dangerous. Even competent players can be counter-productive.

And finally: What if the wrong players give up and leave? We've already seen huge piles of bots irritating things up, and they don't get bored, and they don't lose interest. It'd become a bot wasteland before success, I suspect.

With a bit more thought, I wonder if I can calculate how many times more complicated the maze is in comparison with the ledge. Ledge took eight hours or so, right?

The thought experiment on calculating the difficulty is interesting (12 hours), but most people were aware in the beginning that its a fight against the odds. Most people didnt think this was possible, so it was a fight to show what actually is possible and how they can go.

I mean just look at the ledge thing, it was extremely difficult and spawned voting behaviour systems that even tried accounting for the lag and eventually they overcame it, multiple times within a few minutes. Sure, most of these puzzles are going to be way tougher, but that was sort of the point for many. It seems impossible, yet they still did it and came up with crazy meta strategies? So awesome.
 

GamerJM

Banned
Okay, so, thoughts on the Anarchy/Democracy thing:

-Anarchy would be the best and the most fun to watch, but progress would be a lot slower. As someone who doesn't actually really watch much of the stream and just tunes in at certain intervals throughout the day and then reads various summaries and recaps of what's happened it's more interesting but also slower in the long run, it would take weeks-months and there would be days where nothing happens that I care about.

-I also think the anarchists have the better argument for the most part, a lot of the fun, stories, randomness, and memes never would have happened if we didn't have an anarchy system in the first place.

-On the other hand this system doesn't completely ruin the Stream. I think it's a fair compromise for people who want to see shit get done. Someone said that the option of anarchy makes no sense because Democracy is always going to be more efficient, and regardless of whether or not that's true I think that line of thinking is missing the point of the system. Not all of the chat cares about what's the more efficient option. The point of the voting is to see what the people in the chat would prefer at any given time after we had five days of anarchy and people formed their opinions on whether or not they liked watching it. It's meant to be a compromise. If anarchy is winning that means that the people in the chat at this given moment would rather watch a stream in the style of the first four badges, not that they necessarily think it'll make things more efficient. If we didn't have five days of anarchy then that would be a valid point, but we did and the people voting anarchy want chaos to ensue like it did for the first five days.

-The biggest issue I have with the system is that it does ruin the integrity of this as a legitimate social experiment. But like someone else said this was ruined the moment he tried Democracy so he might as well make the best of it now that it's ruined. And there's still tons of potential hear for psychological/sociological/political analysis so it's not like the stream isn't still a meta as hell statement about the way people cooperate.
 

OTIX

Member
The streamer already said that he'd turn off the step counter for Safari Zone so that we don't try over and over again and run out of money.
Then there's no need for democracy at all.

Being stuck in the same place for a whole day isn't boring? oh look red is spinning in the wrong direction AGAIN.

it's not entertaining
But completing it would have been the greatest triumph in the history of mankind. And walking right back in would have been wonderfully soulcrushing. Instead we got nothing. We were robbed.
 

Kimaka

Member
When democracy was turned on and we were trying to navigate the maze, it was still really exciting to watch the votes tallying. I'm not holding this stream up to some sort of imaginary ideal, it's entertainment.

If you want chaos, it's definitely still here. We are currently in the Game Freak development building for no reason.

Yeah, it was really fascinating how quickly everyone came together and compensated for lag during the democratic maze run.

There is now this four way struggle between anarchy, democracy, progress, and hindrance which continues to be entertaining to me.
 
Being stuck in the same place for a whole day isn't boring? oh look red is spinning in the wrong direction AGAIN.

it's not entertaining

Sure is, but you don't need to see the whole thing. Just come back and if there are stories you missed, that's a shame but it happens. Plenty of us zone out and return (sleep, work etc) for the stories. If it's boring when we watch, that's just too bad.
 

Sianos

Member
I believe that's up to the creator, and it looks like he's made his decision.

Oh god, how deep does this go? What is the meaning of life? Is it to beat the game or is there something more?

the point is to only address part of my quote as a strawman, yes :U

There already was a democratic stream, why not use that one? This was something unique, creating unique stories and while frustrating at point,t hat only makes real progress all the more satisfying.

There's plenty recorded games of Pokemon Red to enjoy the efficient progress.
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
the very fact that people were proposing the idea that they should have just waited until 70 thousand people got bored and left so that something could get done shows how busted anarchy-only is for the game

the very idea that it is LESS boring to let 70k people get bored than to have the voting system is overtly ridiculous
 

okayfrog

Banned
Which is good, because the ones that are left will probably be able to get pass that difficult part. Then interest would be rekindled.

This. Like I said, it's people who want to have their cake and eat it too: They want to be a part of the biggest Pokemon playthrough of all time, but they also don't want to spend every waking minute at a computer so they won't miss something good. To that I say "tough luck".
 

mclem

Member
I mean just look at the ledge thing, it was extremely difficult and spawned voting behaviour systems that even tried accounting for the lag and eventually they overcame it, multiple times within a few minutes. Sure, most of these puzzles are going to be way tougher, but that was sort of the point for many. It seems impossible, yet they still did it and came up with crazy meta strategies? So awesome.

The ledge wasn't just lag; when it worked, it did so in part *because* the movers overwhelmed the trolls. We need to keep the interested players playing because, as I said upthread, bots won't get bored.
 

FStop7

Banned
The democracy/anarchy stuff ruined it.

The magic is gone.

Should have just let it go. Eventually the people who only cared about being jerks would have grown bored and only the dedicated would have remained. It might have taken time but it would have happened.
 

Trey

Member
there's gotta be a compromise between the two, ya'll gotta admit that much.

And democracy's not simply a slow let's play because the realities of the stream make coordination on that level difficult. Democracy cuts down on the trolling and minimizes lag's effect somewhat.
 
Given how he turned start-throttling on and off, and now this change, I'd say the dude hasn't really made up his mind about what he wants out of the stream. I wouldn't really be surprised to wake up tomorrow and find the voting system gone.
 

Wiz

Member
I don't think we'll ever go back to democracy. The closer it gets, the more people will stop voting commands and instead vote against it
 
Top Bottom